About two months ago, I was mindlessly scrolling on Instagram when an ad for a “Noise Reducer” plug-in caught my eye. (Yes, I know, I got reeled in by an Instagram ad). It showed an artist...
Universal Audio has been quietly updating some of their previously released plug-ins with new features that you may have overlooked if not watching closely. About four years ago, I purchased the dbx...
With the era of analog tape slipping ever further into the past, growing numbers of newer-generation music recordists have had precious little experience with actual tape. Analog tape, though still...
My recording world began via the cassette tape format. I had saved money to buy a cheap home stereo cassette tape recorder, and I’d borrow my dad’s deck for recording my sound-on-sound...
Inspired Acoustics might not be a household name in the music industry, but they have been producing minutely detailed, pipe organ sample libraries since 2005 (used by top tier composers), and are...
Apogee Digital has released a simple, stellar-sounding channel strip plug-in. I’m guessing that ECS stands for Equalizer, Compressor, and Saturator, as those are the tools equipped in this...
I’ve written about vocoders in previous issues of Tape Op, so I won’t go into a lot of theory here, but check this review for more of the basic operational theory of vocoding. Arturia...
If you want to time warp your sounds or samples, XLN Audio’s RC-20 Retro Color plug-in is most likely the tool for you. I should clarify that it is not a clinical, surgical, X-Acto knife of a...
The McDSP APB (Analog Processing Box) [Tape Op #134] is the gift that keeps on giving. In addition to the original stock plug-ins the APB-8 and APB-16 shipped with, Colin and the folks at McDSP have...
Years ago, while wandering around NAMM or AES looking for new plug-ins that could do something cool and unique, I could always count on seeing the people from Synchro Arts showing off their unique...
I was an early adopter of Universal Audio’s UAD plug-in platform. My 2003 Power Macintosh G5 may have housed only a single UAD-1 DSP Card [Tape Op #41], but at the time, I thought the world of...
The golden age of plug-ins is happening right now. Initially, most audio plug-ins aped existing analog gear such as EQs, compressors, and existing effects units like plate reverbs and tape delays. I...
